Several factors have been attracting research efforts to the development of new planar structures for microwave planar circuits. Various proposals can be found in the technical literature, exploring different ways of miniaturization of circuits, improvement of coupling efficiency, increase of bandwidth or reduction of losses. Among these is the use of ferroelectric materials, whose dielectric properties can be altered with the application of an electrical voltage, enabling the fabrication of a new class of compact active devices; however, such materials present some disadvantages, like very high losses and difficulties in manufacturing. Parallel to that, the dissemination of optical telecommunications generates a demand for new optical components for the systems, with greater efficiency and capacity but lower cost. Due to the use of silica optical fibers in telecommunications, it is desirable that these new components are fabricated in materials compatible to silica, as for example some types of glass. The electro-thermal polarization emerged as a way of producing active electro-optical devices from glass substrates used for passive optical waveguides. In this work, the processes of electro-thermal treatment used in optical substrates are applied to dielectric substrates for microwave use. The resulting effects on the changes in dielectric properties in the microwave frequency range and potential application in components and circuits are assessed. Such treatments are constituted fundamentally by the application of high voltage to the substrate in the presence of high temperature, aiming at the controlled migration of ions in the material. The substrates considered are alumina, conventional microwave substrate with high dielectric constant, and glasses, borosilicate and soda-lime, which are currently being used as substrates for optical waveguides and for the construction of active optical devices. The dielectric loss of treated glasses as substrates for planar microwave circuits is characterized. The development of active optical devices in vitreous substrates also implies the manufacture of microwave electrical circuits on the same substrate, in order to feed these devices with data at high rates. Glasses have high dielectric losses in this frequency range due to the presence of alkali ions. The creation by the electro-thermal treatment of an ion- depleted layer, near the surface below the planar circuit, enables the reduction of the effective losses in planar circuits. Another investigated effect is the possibility of creating a behavior similar to the ferroelectric effect in the microwave substrate. The depletion layer created by the electro-thermal treatment causes alterations in the structure and allows the recording of a static electric field by the displacement of ions. The influence of this field within the material on the variation of its dielectric properties, and the response to the application of an external control voltage are assessed. Then, the substitution for treated substrates of ferroelectric materials in the development of components such as switches, variable couplers and attenuators and microwave filters is considered.